Video Premiere: Ethan Gold, “They Turned Away”

Check out the darkly brilliant video for “They Turned Away” from cerebral, San Francisco-based songwriter Ethan Gold. Before launching his solo career, Gold studied social theory at Harvard University and produced and arranged Elvis Perkins’ memorable debut album. The song hails from Gold’s Songs From A Toxic Apartment.

“‘They Turned Away’ is about all the buried rage shouting in men’s heads if they feel unwanted, or their boyhoods felt joyless,” he tells us. ” It’s the cause of a lot of violence later on, I think.

“For the video, I wanted to personify this desperation as terrifying and absurd generals, shouting at our innocent selves in the bunker of our heads. They’re all played by the same person, in this case, me, because all those voices are within us. We humans contain within our minds our most brutal and ridiculous interrogators.”

“All the instruments in the video were made out of metal parts for the video,” Gold explains.” I wanted to make mid-century-militaristic versions of all my alter ego generals, playing deconstructed metallic versions of rock instruments.”